everything just takes me back (to when you were there)
by DaughterOfPoseidon333
Summary: Dressing up took her mind off of it. Han/Leia The Force Awakens one-shot. MAJOR MOVIE SPOILERS. DON'T READ UNLESS YOU'VE SEEN IT.


**Hello, everybody!**

 **This is my first Star Wars fic that I've posted which is pretty cool! The new movie gave me a lot of feelings, especially when it came to Han and Leia. I haven't written anything in a while, so I'm not entirely sure how I feel about this, but I had to get my feelings out. And I'll probably write something more coherent about these two later, but for now this is it.**

 **Title comes from Adele's "When We Were Young".**

 **SPOILERS. SUPER DUPER MAJOR SPOILERS. DON'T READ IF YOU HAVEN'T SEEN THE MOVIE. That is all.**

 **I don't own anything. Enjoy!**

 **-:-**

Dressing up took her mind off of it.

'It' being the raw, gaping hole in her chest where Han had once been. She'd felt it, felt it like a blaster shot straight through the heart. Since realizing her true parentage, realizing her strength in the Force, she'd been able to feel so much through it. Everything from the purest forms of joy and beauty and strength, to the heavy feeling of loss that struck her down to the very core of her being. After all, it wasn't easy to try and keep the peace in an entire galaxy of systems, and loss was sort of in the job description.

But she'd never felt anything quite as heavy as when she felt Han's life force flicker out and die, leaving an emptiness that made words stick in her throat. Thousands of lightyears away and she felt it as strongly as if he'd been standing right next to her when he'd been struck down. She didn't know which was worse. She had a feeling, too, about how…how it had happened…but completing that thought was always too painful. So she ignored it. Ignored all of it. She made herself busy. It wasn't hard, now that she was a general, but the moments of free time she did have, she tried to find something to do. She started dressing up more, like she used to. It took time, and it made her look put together, when in reality she was anything but.

Leia tried to tell herself that she shouldn't feel this strongly, that the hole in her chest that made it hard to breathe shouldn't be damn near tearing her apart, but gods it was just as bad as when, all those years ago, she thought she'd lost him for good when he'd been frozen in carbonite and shipped off to the unforgiving harshness of the Tatooine deserts. That year she'd spent searching for him, planning to rescue him, _without him_ had been torture. But they'd gotten him back. She'd gotten him back. And now she would never get that chance again.

He'd always come back in the past, no matter how long in between, and she'd been foolish to think she'd be so lucky as to see him return to her again.

They'd had their troubles over the years, especially after their son strayed from them, but she'd never stopped loving him. She had a feeling he knew that (dammit, of _course_ he knew) but she'd never get the chance to actually tell him that. But the last time he'd seen her, the last time he'd held her in his arms, well, she supposed it came pretty damn close. At least that's what she kept telling herself, even if it did nothing to lessen the pain that was weighing her heart down, burning slowly like the twin suns setting beyond the sands of Tatooine that Luke often spoke of. One of the few beautiful things he missed about his home planet, the same home planet of their father.

She tried to keep thinking about those twin suns, about getting Luke back, about her duties as general, about _anything_ other than a first kiss, shared in the belly of the ship she'd begun to think of as a second home, since her first one had been blown to dust. Tried not to think of those weeks spent traveling to Bespin, holding back and holding her feelings in before falling, falling, falling so fast after that kiss. That kiss which led to more kisses and a night in his bunk where he smiled just for her and showed her a tenderness she didn't even know he possessed. Tried not to think about the city in the clouds and how his eyes never left hers and that final, desperate press of his lips to hers before she told him what she'd been keeping locked up behind her walls for nearly three years.

Then there was the year without him, without his warmth beside her in the bunk, without his roguish grin and charming eyes. A year spent alone, wearing his shirts and calling out his name when the nightmares blended with reality and she woke to find him as absent and out of reach as he was in her sleeping world. Then the rescue, the weight of him in his arms, the simple proof that he loved her with the way he spoke her name like it was the oxygen he was so desperately breathing into his lungs after so long frozen in a metallic prison. The way he held her in his arms on the moon of Endor, so similar to the way he'd held her last. Right before she'd let him go (which she never should have done in the first place) and he'd died trying to fulfill her last wish for him, that he bring their son home. But neither of them did. Han couldn't bring Ben back home (she refused so believe that he couldn't still be saved; maybe it was a mother thing) but he'd still ended up saving an entire galaxy of people with his sacrifice. So many, but not himself.

And now nothing felt right. The whole world just didn't feel _right_ without Han Solo in it. She knew it was inevitable, of course, she'd seen him get older. She was getting older herself. But to her, it had always seemed that Han Solo would live forever. After all that they'd been through, the good and the bad, it seemed impossible that they wouldn't always be together, in some way at least.

But here she was, smoothing down the front of her fancy blue dress, trying to keep her head held high as she watched the _Millennium Falcon_ take off without the person who had captained it for over half his life. She was okay with Rey taking Han's seat. She liked the girl a lot, and more importantly, Chewie approved of her, and if they were going to be piloting together, she supposed that's all that mattered. Still….the constant ache in her chest flared up when she saw the _Falcon_ take off without Han in it.

 _Luke will be coming back, though,_ she told herself. _Luke will come home_. Luke would understand the pain she was feeling. She had no doubt he'd felt it in the Force, too, when Han died. If she got one comfort out of all of this, it was that her brother was coming home. She tried for a smile, and found it came a little easier than she thought it would. Luke was coming home. The _Falcon_ still had a pilot. And Han…she would heal. It hurt too much to think about him for too long at a time, but she hoped that one day, one day she would be able to think about him and feel the absence that was in her heart right now fill up with the warmth and light she felt with him. One day she hoped she would be able to feel him in the Force as strongly as if he were beside her again, just like old times.

 **-:-**

 **Thanks for reading!**

 **-DaughterOfPoseidon333**


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